A Berry Clever Corpse

by WINTERS, A. R.

  “Want some coffee?” I asked.

  “Did you make it?” she mumbled.

  Ouch. “No, Brad made a double pot this morning.”

  “Then, yes.”

  I didn’t know what to think. I’d never known Zoey to be mean, at least not to me and not without provocation.

  Giving Zoey the benefit of the doubt and not negatively reacting to her surliness, I quietly got her a cup of coffee and slid the chilled silver container of organic cream and the little spoon pot of sugar over to her. She didn’t perk up as she loaded up her coffee with the mix she liked. She stayed slouched with her neck and chin dropped forward.

  Finally, feeling bold, I reached across the counter, and pinched the center piece of her sunglasses. Gently, I lifted them away from her face.

  Phew. No black eye, at least not one that heavy eyeliner didn’t give her. Her eyes were bloodshot, though, kind of like she’d been awake all night. Staring unblinking at her computer screens.

  “Want some biscuits and gravy?”

  “No.”

  “Jelly and biscuits, or honey and butter on a biscuit?”

  “No.”

  I had to think. Zoey was in a curmudgeon’s mood. That’s when it came to me. Without saying a word, I left Zoey there and ran upstairs to my apartment. I was back two minutes later. I had just the thing to brighten her up. I poured a tall glass of cold milk and presented Zoey with a plate of Oreo cookies.

  She smiled. Finally. It was a small one. But I saw it, I swear.

  I left her to eat her cookies and went and fixed her a plate of biscuits, gravy, bacon and eggs. I even drew a smiley face with ketchup on top of the eggs. She’d said she didn’t want any biscuits and gravy, but I was trusting the cookies to act as a primer to her appetite.

  It worked. As soon as I got back and put the plate of food in front of her, she started eating. She sat up a little taller, and her head drooped a little less.

  “This is good,” she said, and I knew the crisis had passed. She was on her way to getting on top of whatever it was that had her feeling so grumpy.

  I went to take care of my other customers. There were more this morning than usual, and I was pretty sure that the café was actually managing to operate in the black. Of course, it helped that I didn’t have any paid staff working yet today. It was just me. But, that wouldn’t last for long. Sweet Melanie, my waitress, was due in at any time. I’d pulled out a lasagna that Brenda had prepped and frozen for me. And I had a large bowl of tossed salad almost done. Everything would be ready to go for easy serving after Zoey and I left. Melanie would be able to handle taking care of customers all on her own.

  Mike Pratt’s funeral was today, and Zoey and I were going to go. Zoey had been wearing a black wraparound dress with white polka dots underneath her parka. As for me, my jeans, t-shirt and cardigan would have to be changed out for some more funeral appropriate attire.

  Zoey had her plate half cleared by the time I got back to her.

  “Okay, it’s time. What gives?” I asked. I saw a flash of surliness return to Zoey’s eyes, but it was gone just as fast.

  “I was up all night researching fat face.”

  “Come again? Researching who?”

  “Fat face. Conrad. That’s what I’m calling him.”

  Conrad didn’t even have a fat face. I didn’t know where Zoey’s hostility was coming from.

  “I couldn’t believe how Agatha swooned for him,” she went on. “She’s old enough to know better. She’s older than any of us. Why wouldn’t she know better?”

  “Know better about what?”

  Zoey looked at me like I’d just asked her if she thought it was okay if I drank poison.

  “That all men are scum!” Zoey blurted.

  Ohhhhh… Things were starting to make sense. Zoey’s heart had been put in a blender and then blowtorched. She’d been through so much.

  I leaned on my forearms atop the counter. “So what kind of scummy things did you find out about Conrad?”

  “Nothing,” she said, the surliness back. She stabbed at her breakfast and ate it angrily, like it had somehow wronged her. “He’s from Florida. Widower of a woman he was married to for over thirty years. Grown kids that are close to him. Adoring grandfather. Sat by his wife’s side through a long illness. Financially comfortable. No embezzling. No laundering. No out of control gambling, drinking, or drug habits. Nothing.”

  She stabbed at the biscuit so hard that her fork clinked against the plate. She sounded very unhappy that she hadn’t been able to dig up any dirt on Agatha’s starry-eyed suitor, Conrad.

  She shook her fork at me. “All men are scum. I just have to find out how this one is scum.”

  I took a beat to let her words rest and to let their echoes vacate the quiet, empty space between us. “And Brad, is he scum, too? Or Joel? Or Jack?” It was true that Brad had taken a turn at investigating both me and Zoey for murder, but I didn’t think that him doing his best to do his job should relegate him to the category of scum.

  “They’re not men,” Zoey answered scornfully. “They’re just them. They don’t count.”

  “I’m not sure Jack’s wife would agree,” I said with a playful chuckle. It won me a smile from Zoey.

  “I guess not,” she conceded.

  I started absentmindedly wiping the countertop with a cleaning cloth, dividing my attention between Zoey and my work. I wanted to nudge an idea at Zoey, not shove it down her throat. People resisted when you tried to force an idea on them. “Maybe Conrad’s like Jack?” I finally said.

  Zoey scowled, clearly not ready to bestow upon Conrad the same respect she had for Jack.

  I left her to her stewing and took care of some more customers. Then, Melanie made it in, and I brought her up to speed on the work that was ahead of her.

  When I made it back to Zoey, I asked, “Were you able to find out anything about what properties Mike owned?”

  Zoey shook her head. “I tapped into the County Clerk’s records, but they only go back to 1988. Mike most likely bought his properties before that and the paper documents haven’t been converted over to the digital storage yet.”

  “Digital storage?”

  “Yeah, they haven’t been recorded in the office’s online database.”

  “So we’ll have to go there in person?”

  “Not me,” Zoey said. “I can handle only so much human contact. People are too weird.” She narrowed her eyes. “Especially in contained, isolated groups like government offices. They’re the worst. I vote that we go talk to Mike’s ex, what’s-her-name.”

  “Emily?”

  “Yeah, her.”

  We didn’t have a last name. “Think she’ll be at Mike’s funeral?”

  Zoey shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Chapter 12

  The old Victorian house that was being used as a funeral home sat forty feet off the road. A sign on the lawn announced it as the Williamson Funeral Home. I guessed there was parking behind it, but Zoey had opted to park on the street. That left us with a forty foot walk up a narrow concrete walkway to the funeral home’s front door.

  When we stepped inside, we were out of the harsh cold, but that was the only improvement. Inside, the home was chilly and the air was stale. It smelled like the inside of a refrigerator after the fans stopped working. Everything was dead about the home, figuratively and literally.

  “Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. Can I take your coats?” asked a man with a deep baritone voice that almost seemed to echo all on its own without any help from its surroundings. His nose was so large and so hooked that it could have almost been used to pop the top off of soda bottles. He was tall, lanky, and skeleton thin. His skin wasn’t white in the way most Caucasians were white—there was a complete absence of color. He was the neon of white. Hard to even look at without having to blink repeatedly from the strain of reflective glare.

  “I’ll take those,” said another man stepping up to stand next to
the first. His skin was a warm, dark brown and his smile was so big and glamorous that it could have stopped a mugger mid-wallet reach. His body was lithe, lean and graceful. Draping Zoey’s parka and my princess coat over his arm, he turned to the tall man and looked up at him from beneath eyelashes that Elizabeth Taylor would have envied. “I’ve set the refreshments out.”

  “Thank you, Jasper,” the first man said without looking at him.

  Jasper’s eager smile turned into a scowl, apparently not pleased with the response. Turning on his heel, he headed on his way, his back rigid and his chin held high.

  “I apologize for my partner’s exuberance,” the tall man said. “Jasper does not yet grasp the required decorum at these functions. My name is Samuel Gringot. Please let me know if you need anything.”

  He started to turn away, but Zoey’s raised finger and her utterance of, “Uh,” stopped him.

  “Yes?” he said, turning back around and giving Zoey his full attention. With his hands clasped behind his back, there was a curved lean forward to his stance that made him look as though was not just taller than us but that he was towering over us. It was unnerving, to say the least.

  “When you say partner…” Zoey’s voice trailed off. It sounded as though she was trying to ask something without being so blatant as to actually ask it.

  “Yes. Times are changing, aren’t they? I should have said ‘husband.’”

  I did not see that coming. Samuel looked like death dug up out of the ground two weeks after the fact. Jasper looked as though he would be the life of the party. Above ground. Among the land of the breathing.

  I guessed it was true. Opposites did attract.

  Samuel went on his way, and I did my best to suppress the urge to strangle Zoey for embarrassing me. Then the thought of strangling her embarrassed me even more, given the reason for Mike’s funeral.

  We made our way down the hallway to a large, open parlor. There was a large framed picture of Mike beside an open casket. Inside, Mike was dressed in an expensive suit. He was not wearing a tie or even a bow tie. Gorgeous yet understated flowers adorned the casket on top and at both ends. Elegant but not festive.

  The rest of the room was filled with fold-out chairs.

  “There’s almost nobody here,” I whispered to Zoey, despite the fact that I was stating the obvious. Almost all the chairs were empty. “Are we early?”

  “Nope. On time.”

  There were a couple of small groups of three people gathered, talking low amongst themselves. They were standing, and they were dressed in clothes one might wear to go out to dinner. They weren’t exactly festive, but they certainly weren’t dark.

  There was one woman sitting, and she was alone. She was also crying. And she was dressed from head to toe in black.

  “Emily?” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  I went one way and Zoey went the other. Together, we sat down on either side of the crying woman. I guessed her to be in her mid to late 40s. She was a little plump and her age was starting to catch up to her. She looked tired, and her tears looked genuine.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  The woman sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a shaky hand. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Emily?” Zoey said.

  The woman looked at her. “Who? No.” She dabbed at her eyes some more. “Who are you?” Even though we were sitting on either side of her, she managed to address the question to both of us.

  “My name is Kylie Berry, and this is Zoey Jin.” I paused, unsure of what to say next. We weren’t friends with Mike. I’d never even met him when he was alive. And on the day that he’d died, Zoey and I had been on our way to his place to blackmail him. That wasn’t much of an opener to gain the trust of someone clearly grieving his passing.

  “We’re looking into Mike’s death,” Zoey said.

  The woman’s bloodshot eyes opened wide and an expression I could only describe as hope filled her face. “You are?”

  Honesty worked. Who knew? I made a mental note to myself to consider trying it first next time instead of doing my best to think up a handy dandy lie.

  “Yes, we are,” Zoey said. “May we ask what your relationship to Mike Pratt was?”

  She sniffed again. “He was my brother.”

  Jackpot! If I could have done a high-five with Zoey above the woman’s head without being noticed, I would have.

  Zoey continued with her interrogative questions. “And what is your name?”

  “Claudia Abramson. Abramson was my married name. Widowed.”

  “Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to do Mike harm?” Zoey asked.

  Claudia slumped in her chair as her eyes drifted around the floor in front of her. Finally she shook her head. “Mike and me haven’t been very close for a long time now,” she said with a note of apology in her voice.

  “Did you used to be close?” I asked.

  “He was about ten years older than me, so we didn’t really do a lot of growing up together, but I’d thought we were pretty close.”

  “When did that change?” I asked.

  Her face grew long as a resigned sadness settled in. “When I asked him for money.”

  Ohhh… Mike did seem to be rather fond of his money.

  “We’d wanted to buy a house,” she went on, “but the down payment was more than we could do. After I asked him for help, things were never the same between us again.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t think much of Mike, but his sister had genuinely seemed to care about him. When he’d died, she’d lost someone she had held dear.

  “Can you tell us anything about Conrad Holt?” Zoey asked.

  “Conrad Holt…” Claudia paused in thought. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Did you know any of Mike’s friends from high school or college?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. There was so much age between us. When he was in high school, I was still very young. And he never brought any friends home from college.”

  Zoey’s lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. Zoey had struck out on digging any dirt up on Conrad again, and I could see that it wasn’t sitting well with her.

  “How did Mike get so much money?” I asked, taking over the questioning.

  “He won the lottery. Won millions.”

  That was a lot of money. I hadn’t realized it had been so much.

  “Do you know who will inherit?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but not me.”

  “Why not you?”

  She shrugged. “When he helped me with the down payment of the house, he told me then that I’d never get another dollar from him. Said I was on my own and to never ask for help again.” She didn’t sound bitter. She looked reflective. “He wasn’t always like that,” she said. “He’d take me for ice cream cones when I was a kid or bring me back a present when he’d come back from college. He’d always been generous with me back when he didn’t have hardly anything to be generous with.”

  “What changed that? What made him stop wanting to be generous?”

  “After he won the lottery, he had a bunch of girlfriends. Every time he called home, he’d mention a new girlfriend. Always a different one. This went on for maybe five years. Over and over, he’d say, ‘this is the one,’ only to end up having a different girlfriend a few weeks later.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How would that change him from a person who had been generous to someone who wasn’t generous?”

  “He told me later that all those girls had milked him to see how much they could get out of him with expensive presents and trips and then they’d dumped him. Every single one. It made him not trust anyone. After that he was always looking for how others were trying to play him. He didn’t trust anyone.” She rubbed at her chest with her fingertips as if to rub some pain away. “I hate that he lumped me together with all of them, that he thought that I wanted to take advantage of him and didn’t c
are about him.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t leave you anything?” I asked.

  “Positive. He wouldn’t have. He just wouldn’t.”

  “So someone else is due to inherit,” Zoey said, latching onto the information with both hands. “Maybe a friend. Maybe someone he knew in school.” She wasn’t calling Conrad out by name, but she might as well have written it in permanent ink across her forehead.

  “Claudia, do you know any of the other people here?” I asked.

  She took a moment to scan the room before shaking her head.

  Among those in attendance, Conrad was nowhere in sight. Neither was Susie, but that didn’t surprise me. Even if Susie didn’t kill Mike, they weren’t on the best of terms. I wondered if any of the others in attendance might be some of his other renters.

  “And do you know anyone named Emily?” I asked. I hoped that she could give us a clue about the woman Mike had considered marrying. Without a last name, she would be hard to track down.

  Claudia thought, then her face lit up. “Oh! My son’s first grade teacher had been named Emily.”

  “How long ago was your son in first grade?” Zoey asked.

  “About eighteen years ago.”

  “Did Mike ever meet her?” I asked.

  “No, not that I know of.”

  The Emily we were looking for was engaged to Mike about five years ago. I was pretty sure that Claudia’s son’s first grade teacher and Mike’s fiancé were not one in the same, especially since they probably had never met.

  Zoey and I excused ourselves from Claudia and meandered around the room. We got names when we could, as well as affiliations. One clear-eyed mourner was a representative from the bank. Another was Mike’s stockbroker. Then there was Mike’s accountant. Everybody in attendance seemed to have done work for Mike and Mike’s money. Nobody knew about his will or who was going to be executing his will. Nobody was a personal, close friend.

  A throat cleared and we all turned our attention to the front of the room. A short man with a Bible in his hands was standing a few feet away from Mike’s casket.

  Everyone standing, Zoey and myself included, found a chair. That left ten chairs full and what looked like another thirty-five chairs empty. It was a modest and sad turnout.